Short Stuff

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I frequently find myself baffled by abbreviations and acronyms that I run across both online and IRL. It’s particularly confusing when one is traveling in another country and the acronyms are hyper local. So, I was happy to stumble on the very informative website Abbreviations.com  Here’s what it’s all about:

We are the world’s largest and most comprehensive directory and search engine for acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms on the Internet.

Abbreviations.com holds hundreds of thousands of entries organized by a large variety of categories from computing and the Web to governmental, medicine, and business.

It is maintained and expanded by a large community of passionate editors.

 

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Funny, Not Funny

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Reading machine

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Many, many years ago, I lived in the university town of  Gainesville, Florida. One of the many limitations of the small city was its not so great transportation services, including a sorry little airport. But now the Alachua County Regional Airport even features a book vending machine highlighting Florida authors, courtesy of Gainesville’s  Lynx bookstore. The Gainesville Sun reported that the machine was “unveiled by the Lynx bookstore co-founders Lauren Groff and Clay Kallman,  who view the vending machine as a passion project. The hope is that the vending machine will provide book readers and frequent flyers another way to enjoy their flight experience.”

The bookstore shared an Instagram video chronicling the arrival at its new destination and noting that the vending machine “features Florida authors including Zora Neale Hurston, Carl Hiaasen, and Karen Russell. Huge thanks to @oldfloridavibes [Hunter Turner] for the amazing art on the machine!”

 

 

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Il caffè fa girare il mondo

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

You can visit coffee shops in different places around the world in this video. A coffee drink is ordered in nine countries, and we get to watch it through the customer’s POV. Each coffee drink is captioned, indicating its name and ingredients.

When I travel one of the first things that I do is to check out coffeeshops and roasteries where I’m going to be staying and visiting. The amazing variety of coffee drinks always fascinates me, but invariably I get a double espresso or a simple black drip coffee.

 

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Pity the Nation

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

PITY THE NATION

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2007

(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerers

And acclaim the bully as hero

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows

No other language but its own

And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money

And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty!

 

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“There is a great deal of art to creating something that seems artless.”

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

There is writing which resembles the mosaics of glass you see in stained-glass windows. Such windows are beautiful in themselves and let in the light in colored fragments, but you can’t expect to see through them. In the same way, there is poetic writing that is beautiful in itself and can easily affect the emotions, but such writing can be dense and can make for hard reading if you are trying to figure out what’s happening.

Plate glass, on the other hand, has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between.

— Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir, 1994

 

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More than a bookstore

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

In the heart of the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood in Detroit, a failed bookstore is experiencing a welcome rebirth. Pages Bookshop, a valued independent bookstore, has found new life with the help of the Steen Foundation and a team of dedicated young Detroiters.

Leading the revival is 23-year-old Detroit native Jeremiah Steen. His foundation, launched in 2018, is dedicated to youth empowerment and workforce development. Jeremiah, alongside 24-year-old Grandmont Rosedale resident Jelani Stowers, who now serves as Pages’ general manager, has taken over with more than just financial investment. The pair share a deep-rooted passion for community engagement and literacy.

The new Pages Bookshop hosted a grand opening in April. The event featured community speakers, student performances, and even some wonderful book giveaways. However, the Steen Foundation’s vision for Pages extends beyond traditional bookselling. The new owners plan to transform the space into a multifaceted community hub, complete with art displays and a podcast studio.

Recognizing the importance of accessibility, the new Pages Bookshop plans to extend its reach beyond its physical location. As part of their outreach program, a free traveling book fair will visit various Detroit schools, bringing literature directly to students.

 

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“Once upon a time there was a dragon,”

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.

So I believe that we should trust our children. Normal children do not confuse reality and fantasy – they confuse them much less often than we adults do (as a certain great fantasist pointed out in a story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”). Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. All too often, that’s more than Mummy and Daddy know; for, in denying their childhood, the adults have denied half their knowledge, and are left with the sad, sterile little fact: “Unicorns aren’t real.” And that fact is one that never got anybody anywhere… It is by such statements as, “Once upon a time there was a dragon,” or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” – it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic human beings may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth.-Ursula K. Le Guin, Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?

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International Flight Seat Map

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I’m glad that I didn’t see this very amusing graphic prior to my recent 15 hour international flights; it would have been too depressing. This chart is from Matt Shirley. He clearly has been on some of the same routes that I’ve flown. My favorite part is the “luxury bathrooms you aren’t allowed to use.” On a recent trans-Pacific flight, I was seated in Premium Economy just behind a small Business section that had two restroom that were open most of the time. After using the closest one twice, I was berated by a bored flight attendant who screamed at me while waving his arms in my face. Good times.

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Kyoto Retreat

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

During my all too brief week in Kyoto, I was unable to visit one of the city’s best kept secrets due to scheduling conflicts. If find yourself in the old imperial capital and you want to escape the frenetic pace and crowds head to this secret retreat for books and coffee. Situated north of central Kyoto, the Donkou Kissa Fang, is a serene cafe and private library set  inside of a stunning townhouse and garden. But plan well ahead since it is only open Wednesday through Saturday and solely by reservation. And, to make it even more exclusive, Kissa Fang limits visitors to 6 every 90 minutes.

Donkou means slow thinking in Japanese, and is the name of the private collection of Yoshitaka Haba, a book director who has planned and curated the selection of books for libraries and shops across Japan.

You can learn more on their website or follow them on Instagram.

 

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